Right theme to do things the right way

A great theme that allows deep customization in the WordPress way. Instead of shortcodes, custom screens and stepping into plugin territory, you can use the customizer and meta boxes for lots of simple stuff.

If you want complex customization with a child theme, this a wonderful parent theme, with lots of hooks to add content just anywhere, very clear CSS that you can easily override without ids or !important, and very responsive support.

Paid plugins are cheap and they offer a real lot of options, but the free theme without plugins is already more customizable than almost anything you can find in the WordPress directory.